Senator wants courts to recognize vulnerability of Indigenous females
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Lillian Dyck wants to ensure the high
vulnerability of Indigenous women and girls to violence is specifically
recognized by Canada’s Criminal Code.
The Saskatoon senator has put forward Bill
S-215, which seeks to amend the criminal code so that the court system will be
required to take into account Indigenous female identity during sentencing in
convictions of murder, assault and sexual assault.
The goal of the legislation is to send a
strong signal to Canadian society as a whole that violent crimes committed
against Indigenous women and girls are considered as serious as those committed
against non-Indigenous females.
It is also hoped the legislation will serve
as a deterrent to any potential perpetrators who believe violent crimes against
Indigenous females will be prosecuted less severely.
“If a person is found guilty, then the
judge has to take the female Aboriginal person’s identity into account to
ensure that the sentence is appropriate and that it’s not minimized,” Senator
Dyck says. “Or, it may even be a little bit longer because Aboriginal females
are more vulnerable to being victims of assault or murder.”
Dyck says the idea for the legislation came
to her some months ago when she started noticing bills being passed that
recognize the vulnerabilities to violence under the criminal code of specific
professions or groups but no such legislation existed for Indigenous women.
“I noticed last summer when I was looking
through the bills we had passed there was one on protecting public transit
operators, like taxi drivers. When I reviewed it, I realized the situation was
very comparable (to violence against Indigenous women). So I thought, if we can
amend the criminal code to protect taxi drivers and police dogs, then why can’t
we do the same thing for Aboriginal women?”
Dyck adds perhaps the strongest part of the
bill is that it should serve as a heavy deterrent to potential perpetrators of
violence.
“It’s more than just the sentencing. It
also sends a very strong signal, if it’s followed up with appropriate public
education, to the public that this has to stop and it’s what they call in
sentencing the denouncement. So that if the seed is planted in people’s minds
that this has to stop, they’re not going to get away with it and they might
even get a heavier sentence, that will in effect deter people from targeting
Aboriginal women and girls.”
Bill S-215 passed second reading in the
Senate at the end of January.
In order to become legislation, it will
have pass a third reading in the upper chamber before passing another three
readings in the House of Commons.
A 2014 RCMP report estimates Indigenous
women and girls are three times more likely to go missing and four times more
likely to be murdered as their non-Indigenous counterparts.
In addition, Indigenous women are three
times more likely to be sexually assaulted.
Earlier in the year, the
federal Liberal
government launched a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous
women
.
